


Dust to Gold

by juurensha



Category: Atomic Blonde (2017)
Genre: Angst, Berlin (City), Cold War, Espionage is dirty business, F/F, F/M, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Spies & Secret Agents, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 13:51:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12772425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juurensha/pseuds/juurensha
Summary: “Oh didn’t I mention it? We were friends.”Friends is the least of what they were.It feels good to deceive the deceiver.





	Dust to Gold

**Author's Note:**

> So mainly I got inspired to write this fic from comments James Macavoy made that he wanted his character to be gay, so I guess I just went, what if everyone in this film was bi, and then decided to try writing Cold War-era spy noir. Hope you like it!

He hadn’t actually liked Gascoigne the first time they met. He had already been Berlin’s station chief for over three years then, and who was this hot-shot agent waltzing in, thinking that just because he ran missions in Turkey, he was qualified for the seedy streets of West and East Berlin?

Gascoigne didn’t know shit about how to coax and bribe and cultivate informers with careful applications of both Western luxuries and cold hard threats. He didn’t know the guards who would look the other way when you crossed the border, the entrances and winding tunnels underneath Berlin, the right clothes to wear and the right way to walk to blend into a crowd of shifty punk-rock Berliners. He shivered in the cold, constantly wrapping more coats around him, practically dripping handkerchiefs in his wake.

The man did know how to fight though.

Percival has always been good with the element of surprise and a willingness to hit below the belt, but Gascoigne has all of Percival’s dirty tricks and then a killer shot and a brawler’s ability to both take and deal out damage.

“That’s nothing,” he had said with a grin, using the back of his hand to wipe away the smear of blood at his nose, “You should meet my last partner.”

(And when he does, Percival looks at the wreck of the car, the slumped over, barely breathing bloody Russian, the beaten in red stiletto heel with spots of gore, and the furious Lorraine pointing a gun at him, and promptly decides to never try to take her on head-to-head.

That’s never been his way, anyway.

No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution, and all that.)

So Gascoigne was an annoying prick, but he was better than the French at least, always foisting new baby-agents around the city until they either snapped or ended up in the river.

Besides, Gascoigne was learning (slower than Percival would prefer, but they can’t have everything) and despite the fact that Berlin had already wormed its way under his skin, a touch of home was like a breath of fresh air.

Tea, properly made at the proper time.

Beans on toast without any odd side-eyes, just enthusiastic munching.

The lilt of public school vowels instead of the barked consonants of a German accent or the insidiously nasal broad tones of a Russian one.

And hunting, he hasn’t hunted since—

(Well, that’s not quite right.

He’s hunted and flushed out plenty of quarry in Berlin in the service of queen and country, but that is definitely not the same as just clomping around in boots and hunting jackets with rifles propped up on his shoulder and laughing with mates.)

It’s not much of a surprise that late that night, flush with both laughter and far too much whiskey, he grabs Gascoigne by the shirt collar and drags him in for a filthy kiss.

(He likes his men and women skilled in the art of deceit, so sue him.

It’s an automatic turn-on for most spies anyway.)

It is somewhat of a surprise that Gascoigne kisses back (he was thinking about even odds for either that or Gascoigne deciding to knee him in the nuts, but he was willing to take the chance), and then they fall into bed together, and it’s fantastic.

They never really talk about it, but they do end up spending a lot of nights together in Gascoigne’s cozy little flat, Percival’s strategic mess of a base, and quite a few dirty alleyways outside of just running operations.

Either ways, whatever they are, Gascoigne is there for the late nights where they just drink and smoke and Percival muses about the dirty business they’re in.

Queen and country is all well and good, but they have killed too many innocents and spared too many people guilty as sin for those to be anything but just words.

(Or at least that’s what he had thought until he saw Lorraine’s name on the list and the full picture finally came into focus.

He hadn’t thought he had any lines that he hadn’t already crossed in pursuit of survival and the occasional cut of profit, but trust Lorraine to unearth one.

Kudos to her for being a stone-cold, iron bitch, but he could not sell out one of his fellow MI-6 agents that he has worked with for years and tumbled into bed with.

The more sand has escaped from our hourglass of life, the clearer we should see through it, he guesses.)

So Gascoigne is there when he decides to just shave the rest of his hair off to blend in better, laughing as the razor buzzes and snapping a photo of him with a Polaroid camera.

(Gascoigne had far too much fondness for photos as mementos for their line of work.

And yet, he let him grab him and motion for someone else to take their picture every single time.

He supposes it’s only appropriate that it’s one of those photos that clues Lorraine into his true allegiance.)

They spend just as many nights haunting and screaming in a multitude of seamy Berlin clubs as they do patching each other up (Gascoigne more often than Percival, because Gascoigne is the one who rushes in to a brawl) and even though he knows, he _knows_ that nothing is constant in the life of a spy, they fall into a comfortable pattern of smoking, drinking, talking, and fucking.

The pinnacle of their exploits together is managing to reel in a Stasi officer, tag-teaming the man with threats and cajolement until he finally offers to bring in a list of every active field agent operating in the U.S.S.R. in exchange for passage out of East Berlin.

How they had laughed and drunk that night, not knowing it would be the last.

Then they fished Gascoigne’s body out of the river and he—

(He didn’t break; you couldn’t be in this business unless you were already somehow broken.

But he does think he turned off the lights, shut the door, and tossed away the key of whatever small part of himself Gascoigne had managed to however briefly to illuminate.)

The days after are a blur where he shakes down every single contact he knows for the name of Gascoigne’s killer (and don’t think he doesn’t smell a rat as well, because while it was one person who pulled the trigger, it was another who put them on Gascoigne’s scent) and attempts to both drink and fuck himself into oblivion in the meanwhile.

And then they send Lorraine.

(Gascoigne had talked about his former partner and lover:

Mysterious, beautiful, and lethal, he had described her.

“The best,” Gascoigne had said, with a toast to the moon.

“I think I should feel offended,” he had said, with a raised eyebrow and taking a swig of contraband Jack Daniels.

“The best _spy_ ,” Gascoigne clarified with a laugh, slinging an arm around his shoulders, “You’re still the best station-master.”)

She is as gorgeous and deadly as Gascoigne had described, and when she leaps down the balcony with nary a scratch on her and her ice blonde hair barely tousled and a trail of bodies in her wake, she _terrifies_ him.

(Gascoigne is _gone_ , and that bloody wall is going to be coming down soon, so all that is left to him is revenge and then bailing out with as much money as possible.

Nothing and no one is going to get in the way of that.)

He plants a bug on her as soon as he can (although Lorraine’s hushed, happy conversations with the baby French operative make him want to scream), and then after that, it’s just a chess match between spy and handler, until he finally shoots that bastard Bakhtin in the head and gets his hands on the fucking list.

Then it’s personal.

The Americans want Spyglass so bad? Then let them have his corpse.

He’d take out Lorraine himself, except he knows he’s no match to her head to head, so he’ll let the Russians do the dirty work for him. Fitting for a triple-agent traitor to the crown after all.

Of course, it’s not that simple.

Spyglass dies, but Lorraine rises from the ashes, beat up but definitely not dead, and then as a fucking cherry on top, baby French operative Delphine actually tries to blackmail him with photos of his double dealings with the Russians.

He’d almost be proud if it wasn’t his neck on the line, but it is, so he takes her out.

(Chalk it up to another casualty of the Cold War.

They’re drowning in blood for a stalemate and a victory that is nowhere to be found.

All these years, and all these lies, and the only thing he’s learned is that he fucking loves this city even if it doesn’t love him back and has taken _everything_ from him.)

That brings Lorraine on him like a pile of bricks (ironic; it’s not like she cared about her other lover before she got him killed), and he wonders if this was subconsciously what he had wanted as he lies there in a Berlin alleyway with a bullet in his chest.

Still, at least he gets the honor of being taken out by the best.

(And he will see James again soon.)

“Well played,” he says, and smiles as she shoots him in the head.

**Author's Note:**

> So I have some quotes from Machiavelli in here since Percival seemed to read him, and I kept the ending. Hope you enjoyed it! Please leave comments/kudos!


End file.
